Censored Voices

In June of 1967, armies from Egypt, Jordan and Syria amassed on Israel's borders and threatened its destruction. Israel launched a pre-emptive strike, achieving a stunning and decisive victory in only six days, nearly tripling its size with the occupation of the West Bank. One week after the war, Amos Oz and Avraham Shapira recorded intensely candid confessions from soldiers returning from the battlefield, revealing their fears and doubts. The tapes, captured in the moment when Israel transforms from David into Goliath and censored at the time by the Israel Defense Force, find the veterans wrestling with the weight of the conqueror's responsibility to the conquered. Newly available in full, the recordings are the core of this probing and ruminative film as the former soldiers, now men in their seventies, listen to their younger selves and relive their experience of war. Juxtaposed with rare newsreel footage and photography of the conflict alongside an evocative sound design, CENSORED VOICES is a stark reminder of how far, after fifty years of occupation, the region remains from the peace once fought for over six days in 1967.